Careers In Salesforce is a market leading job site that connects employers seeking Salesforce talent, with candidates who are looking for their next career move. We recently caught up with their Founder and CEO, Richard Eib, for a fireside chat to learn more about why they joined Pledge 1% and what inspires them to #PledgeitForward on this #GivingTuesday.
Q: Careers In Salesforce is one of the first companies to Pledge 1%. What inspired you to join the movement?
A: For the last sixteen years, I have been consulting on, developing on and recruiting for clients who use the Salesforce technology platform. One of the core values of Salesforce that really grabbed my attention and made me an advocate for their technology, was a philosophy of giving 1% of equity, 1% of employee time and 1% of product, to organizations that make a difference, whether it be in the local community or on the global stage. The notion of such a small amount like 1% having such an impact made us look at how our firm could support communities around us through giving back. The founding of Pledge 1% allowed us to solidify our many ideas into an action plan and empowered us to make a formal commitment to making a difference and take the pledge.
Q: Since taking joining Pledge 1%, what have you learned the most from the partnerships and opportunities that have
come your way?
A: The learning curve for my firm and I has been incredibly steep. My original concept of giving back was going to a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, coaching former felons to find gainful employment and turning street skills into employment smarts. Careers In Salesforce in addition to being a job site, also provides consulting and staffing services. The greatest demand from those we select to give back to is consulting services. Over the last six months it has been challenging from both a cultural and workflow perspective to comfortably provide meaningful solutions. In many cases, it has felt like we were integrating a business we had acquired. That being said, seeing the true impact we have made and knowing the savings we have enabled makes the process all the more worthwhile and pushes us forward to accept more of the same.
Q: What role do you feel business has in the community if any?
A: Both of my parents hail from industrial cities in the U.K. My father from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and my mother from Birmingham. For their generation and the many before them, the workplace, alongside church (and the local pub) was the focal point of the community. Whether it was bottling Newcastle Brown Ale or manufacturing Cadbury chocolate, business and the employer held a special place in the heart of employees. It was not just a paycheck, but in many cases a provider of recreational space and facilities, healthcare, housing and more.
As we have continued on our march down the path of technology and automation, we have lost that sense of social responsibility for our fellow humans in the pursuit of profit and the elimination of costs.
You can be a one person business or have many thousands of employees – adopting the concept of giving back 1% of time, equity and product or any variation thereof, restores some of that old school community mindedness as well as making a real difference to those who you help.
Q: What impact has Pledge 1% had on your business?
A: It has strengthened my sense of purpose and that of my firm. It has provided opportunities to make a difference that have been more than about how those opportunities translate to the bottom line . Business 101 teaches us that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash flow is king. Perhaps that adage should be adapted to include another line, something to the effect of “revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash flow is king and giving back is above all”.
Q: Tell us why you think businesses should take the pledge?
A: We’re at a junction in life where those of us who are fortunate need to lend a helping hand to the organizations who help those who are not. Heck it doesn’t even need to be the organizations, you can make a difference today by pledging to take a hot meal to the widower in your apartment building, helping a teacher with classroom supplies or reaching out to your local prison to mentor those who want a better life on the outside. That being said, imagine the difference you could make if this became culturally ingrained in your organization and a mission that everyone from the receptionist to the CEO adopted – Giving 1% of something, be it time, product, equity or all three to make life just a little easier for those who need it.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
By Philipp Stauffer, Co-Founder and Managing Director, FYRFLY Venture Partners
If you haven’t seen Gordon Gekko say “Greed is Good,” then go watch his speech in the movie Wall Street, released in 1987. Greed, for lack of a better word, is an important ingredient in capitalism and efficient markets. However, there is a movement and mindset that, in FYRFLY’s opinion, will drive greater returns than pure capitalism. We call it “Greed for Good.”
Greed for Good has appeared under many different names. Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff calls it “compassionate capitalism,” a way corporations can make doing good an integral part of doing well. Eighteen years since its founding, Salesforce is going strong with its 1-1-1 philanthropy program and has impressive results to show on both shareholders’ and stakeholders’ balance sheets. Similarly, John Mackey, Co-CEO at Whole Foods, is nurturing the concept of “conscious capitalism,” an approach that infuses businesses with a higher sense of purpose and interdependence.
The premise of Greed for Good is that compassion and consciousness lead to a better world, and a better world fuels a stronger brand with a more talented, passionate and committed team. That dedicated team creates and lives by an unbeatable culture, grounded in a mission to solve big problems. As a result, that brand can attract a more loyal customer base and increase customer lifetime value, one of the most important drivers of corporate value. In essence, mission-driven organizations become stronger and more resilient in the long run because they stand for something that matters.
Several consumer studies document the rise of Greed for Good over the past 10 years. Many companies have already used the model to achieve superior marketing ROI, as I highlighted in a previous article.
As an entrepreneur, you can instill a mission-driven culture from day one, before knowing if your company will succeed. Think about what could happen if thousands of start-ups and companies followed this mindset and dedicated their capital/profits, time and product to causes that matter to them. The outcome would be massive value creation that makes capitalism stronger, more resilient and more rewarding. Leaders in Greed for Good can drive exceptional returns while making the world better.
Marc Benioff and the other founders of Pledge 1% have inspired us at FYRFLY Venture Partners for years, and we’re proud to have been one of the first venture capital firms to adopt the concept. Pledge 1% calls for companies to donate 1% of their equity, time and product. We are not impact investors, but we believe giving is part of the formula for generating superior investment returns. We are early in this wave and are committed to measuring the impact of Greed for Good on investment performance.
At FYRFLY Venture Partners, we make seed-stage investments in data-driven technology teams that have global aspirations and game-changing ideas. One of our ‘stealth’ portfolio companies is Doky, a new breed of cloud productivity platforms. Founder and CEO Francesco Tripepi is passionate about how Doky’s platform can have an impact on education globally and is establishing a giving program on this mission. Francesco and his team pledged 1% and started their journey of giving back by kicking off the Doky Foundation.
The Doky Foundation intends to go beyond 1% in terms of product donations and plans to offer its platform for free to any school and student in need. Francesco and his team would love to eliminate the digital divide by helping students access all the tools they need to learn and reach their potential. Doky’s initial programs will focus on education in African countries, but the initiative has global aspirations.
This is just one example of what we see in the next breed of entrepreneurs and start-ups. Giving back does not start once companies are doing well – it starts from the beginning, from day one. Impact is built into the company DNA and Pledge 1% is the new normal.
Guided by Greed for Good, we will create great companies with sustained profitability and meaningful value creation. To that end, we have a request for our fellow VCs and investors: let’s proactively support our entrepreneurs to pursue Greed for Good at the Board level. If we take on the mission to prove that giving enhances shareholder value, we can set a model that Wall Street will follow.
In an article summarizing his book Give and Take, Adam Grant recounts what Bill Gates said at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos: “There are two great forces of human nature – self-interest, and caring for others.” He argues that in many organizations, those forces come together with damaging effect. Adam explains that with thoughtful management though, these two forces can be yoked in such a way that caring for others becomes the best strategy for the most ambitious. At FYRFLY Venture Partners, we believe that is not only true for a company’s internal environment but also for the economy as a whole. As we seed companies that cherish Greed for Good, we will create new global winners. Stay tuned.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
By Nithya Das, SVP, General Counsel, AppNexus
One of AppNexus’ core company values is to see and improve the whole system – whether that system means the internet, our technology or initiatives in our local communities where our offices are based.
Last year, when AppNexus became the 500th company to join the Pledge 1% movement – a global initiative where corporations dedicate one percent of their work hours, money or products to bringing about lasting change in local, underserved communities – AppNexians went to work to make our commitment come alive through an initiative called AppNexus Impact.
Given AppNexus’ global scope and reach, we knew there was significant potential to make an impact. Over the course of 2016, AppNexians were given volunteer time off hours that they could use for volunteer efforts. Then in September, over the course of an entire week, AppNexians – from New York to San Francisco to São Paulo to London to Sydney – were encouraged to take a full, paid-day off to serve their local communities as part of our Global Impact Week.
The week was a success and made a significant impact. In office and after office, AppNexians spent their time working in homeless shelters, soup kitchens and orphanages – not to mention cleaning polluted estuaries and building low-income housing. For many AppNexians, our Global Impact Week was one of the highlights of their year above other company-sponsored events.
But time wasn’t the only resource we devoted to impacting our communities. During that same week, we donated a total
of $25,000 to the very same causes our employees were serving at.
AppNexus Impact is not just a once a year effort for us. We’re making a point of improving our local communities year
round through outreach and internship programs like Girls Who Code and Out in Tech.
To that end, we’re excited to announce that we’ve committed another $20,000 to one of our favorite local causes here in New York: She’s the First, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that girls in third-world countries can receive a full education, regardless of any obstacles that income, geographic location and personal circumstances might present.
To give a sense of how impactful our donation will be, we are donating over 15% of their total funding last year. In 2015, campus chapter students raised more than $130,000 in scholarship funding for their international peers,
For more information on AppNexus Impact, check out our website for a comprehensive list of communities we represent and programs we provide.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
When Accomplice CEO Jeff Fagnan pledged one percent of his company’s carry to the long-term benefit of two Boston-based nonprofits – InnerCity Weightlifting and Resilient Coders, he described the move as a “pledge to pay it forward if you become successful.”
In remarks to the Boston Foundation, Fagnan elaborated that he was impressed with both organizations’ visible impacts on the communities they’ve pledged to serve. “It moved me and broke me down,” Fagnan explained. “And it drove home the point that companies must make tangible commitments to their communities and to organizations that are on the ground working to close the gaps and help people find opportunity.”
Further, Fagnan wrote about joining the Pledge 1% movement, “pledging 1% of our carry to these nonprofits means that we’re thinking of them every day we come into work, with every company we invest in, and with all the time we put in. We know that we’re part of funding the great things they’ll do with it. And we’ll work even harder.”
Fagnan’s exhortation to think about nonprofits we believe in “every day we come into work,” most certainly extends to#GivingTuesday, which kicks off its fifth year at midnight, Tuesday, November 29.
Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving. Since its inaugural year in 2012, #GivingTuesday has become a movement that celebrates and supports giving and philanthropy with events throughout the year and a growing catalog of resources.
So follow Fagnan’s lead. Care every day about nonprofits whose work moves you. Give back. And know that Pledge 1% can facilitate your giving this Tuesday and many more moving forward.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
By Zubin Irani, CEO, cPrime
cPrime is happy to be members of the Pledge 1% #PledgeItForward campaign. Mandating 1% of employee time to charitable causes is a social initiative that we’ve been contributing to for many years. We’re excited to share our continued involvement with organizations like Year Up, a non-profit organization dedicated to training urban young adults in tech careers.
Through a high-support high expectations model paired with an intensive curriculum and corporate internship, Year Up provides urban young adults the opportunity to develop and enhance their professional and educational potential. Since 2000, Year Up has transformed the lives of more than 13,000 young adults with proven results. Four months after the program, 89% of Year Up Bay Area graduates are employed full-time or in college full-time. On average, Year Up Bay Area graduates make $18.00 an hour or around $36,000 a year as a result of the program.
Now in it’s 5th year, cPrime’s Year Up training focuses on the basics of Project Management and dives deeper into the Agile methodology. Our team continues to make sure that the class is practical for students by incorporating workshops with real world concepts for the younger non-project management students. The Agile Essentials Workshop is a comprehensive topic geared towards helping customers adopt Agile, overcome the roadblocks of adopting a new methodology all while learning the fundamental ceremonies of a Scrum project. The students receive an initial understanding of Agile methodologies which are based on iterative and incremental development. They learn about adaptive planning and how to be flexible and responsive to change. Students then are given practical hands-on knowledge of Scrum and skills conducted in the workshop so that they can directly apply these to future internships and job opportunities. The fun part is when the students simulate a real Scrum project with sprints, stories and retrospectives.
Brandon Huff, cPrime’s Agile Coach who conducts Year Up’s training, explains how the skills of a Project Manager are relevant to any career these students may choose to go into, “Learning communication skills, project, time, and team management skills are key to the majority of roles these students will employ”. Jay Banfield, Founding Executive Director of Year Up Bay Area, explains, “This kind of contribution from cPrime offers our students incredible value and makes them even more prepared for the careers they will now have access to. We look forward to continuing trainings with cPrime in the future.” Year Up Bay Area student, Oscar Munoz, shares his feedback on the training, “I didn’t know anything about the Agile process before this training and now, I walked away with a working definition for scrum, agile and waterfall. Even better, now I can actually talk through the concepts. Brandon is a skilled instructor and I appreciated that the training was very interactive – I was never bored.”
To learn more about Year Up and see the many student success stories from the program, please visit
Originally posted: November 29. 2016
By David Bloom. This piece was originally published on the Lurniture blog.
Your last name does not need to be Gates, Buffett or Zuckerberg for you to be a philanthropist. Philanthropy is simply donating your time, knowledge or money, and there are no minimums to participate in this giving game.
In May, at the Salesforce World Tour in Toronto, we pledged 1% of our equity to the Upside Foundation, a platform to help Canadian startups and high-growth companies “Share The Upside” and positively impact our community.
In business, we’ve all heard the late Peter Drucker’s quote that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. The essence of a culture is not captured in the material things like free lunches, dry cleaning or ping pong tables; it must go much deeper for culture to be a true competitive advantage.
I remember during my first week as an employee at salesforce.com, I was flown to California for onboarding. On the 2nd day, we spent the better part of it packing lunches for those that couldn’t afford it. It was at Salesforce that I was introduced to a bottom-up approach to philanthropy where employees were given 4 work days (1%) to give their time back to charity.
To this day, much of these philanthropic events at Salesforce keep employees talking, engaged and giving back. This stems back to a pledge to philanthropy made by the founders in the early days of Salesforce when 1% of the company was put aside and a commitment made to donate 1% of the company’s equity, time and product to charities.
At that time, Salesforce was worth very little, struggling to find venture money and amidst the dotcom crash. Now, 17 years later, the company enjoys a $50B plus market cap and that 1% pledge has contributed millions of service hours, grants and donated product along with inspiring hundreds of companies to make that same commitment.
For those companies adopting this model of philanthropy and supporting the 1:1:1 model, my hat is off to you. You are trailblazers for building a new competitive advantage by having a culture that is not only committed to the bottom line and growth but also to the importance of giving back and showing corporate social responsibility.
For those of you starting or working on startups, 1% of something small is still something small. However, philanthropy is not defined by your logo on the wall of a major hospital or educational institution. You can make a small investment in philanthropy today that will bring near-term returns in culture and long-term financial upside for your entire community.
The time is now to plant your seed of giving and let your team water it every day by building a successful company that creates wealth, jobs and gives back to your community.
Everyone is rooting for you. Make the pledge. Make it happen.
We are doing it today.
To learn more about how you can make the 1% pledge, visit www.pledge1percent.org. If you’re a Canadian company, contact the partner of Pledge 1%, upsidefoundation.ca.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
RevolarⓇ, makers of a discreet, wearable safety device, announced in October a partnership with the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) to educate consumers about intimate partner violence and sexual assault. The partnership aims to disrupt the culture around abuse and assault.
Revolar safety devices empower men and women to live the life they want, knowing that help is near with the push of a button. Revolar keeps users such as college students, runners, solo travelers and anyone concerned with safety, better connected with those they trust most. With the press of a button, the wearable device sends out different alerts via text message and email and includes an active tracking GPS location while the alert is active; a rapid double-press sends a Yellow Alert and a rapid triple-press sends a Red Alert.
Born from the notion that organizations are stronger together than individually, Revolar and The Hotline will work alongside each other to improve education efforts nationwide about the issue of domestic violence. Ultimately, both organizations aim to increase awareness of the issue of domestic violence and the resources available to help prevent and end it.
“The mission of The Hotline is so closely aligned with the mission of Revolar, the partnership is a natural fit,” said Jacqueline Ros, founder and CEO of Revolar. “Because of this alignment, both Revolar and The Hotline realized that while our brands can do great things on our own, we can influence even greater change if we work together.”
Through online activation, on-campus events, student newspapers and resource distribution, Revolar and The Hotline will work to spread awareness about domestic violence. According to the CDC, more than one in three women and more than one in four men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. With this distressing statistic in mind, and as a Pledge 1% member, Revolar also committed to contribute 1% of its equity. Revolar understands the scale of the problem The Hotline works to confront each day and supports their dedication to domestic violence issues.
“Revolar is passionate about leveraging technology to empower people to be safe,” said Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “We are thrilled to partner with a team of people who share our vision of helping to create a world where all relationships are positive, healthy and free from abuse.”
The partnership has several facets, including:
- Providing consumers with the tools and resources they need to feel safe and stay safe
- Empowering students on college campuses to stay aware and educated about abuse
- Creating brand ambassadors on college campuses through Loveisrespect.org
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
By Michael McNeil, Partner and General Manager, Oasis Digital
When we started our high school summer internship program in 2011, we had two simple goals. We felt we could simultaneously provide great personal value to budding software developers, while building future leaders in our industry. What we have found over the years is the impact is far larger. We have been amazed at the footprint of our program in technology education, the software industry (as past interns spread out to companies like Intel, Facebook, Garmin, and other giants), and the St. Louis Area non-profit community.
The program involves a competitive application process. We often get many times the number of qualified applicants that we can hire. We are looking for candidates with a real love for writing software. From varied socio-economic, race, and gender backgrounds, we do not only look at who is the best, but who is passionate. A key criteria is whether they build websites and write applications avocationally as well as in their studies.
Hiring passionate interns has another important outcome: these individuals are very interested in helping others. For the last two years our interns have worked under the supervision of our professional development team to build complex applications for two local non-profits, Oasis International and the Saint Louis Science Center.
Oasis International is an organization that helps refugees from all over the world get established in the St. Louis area. They provide food, furniture, English classes, training, and mentoring to immigrant families. Interns have built and are supporting an application being used to record items from donors, track stock to match items with needs, and schedule deliveries to refugee families. The software creates reporting needed by Oasis International to account to government and private grant sources.
Working on projects such as these, we teach the interns skills that will be of value for the rest of their careers. Understanding needs and translating those into action for a team is high on the list. They learn to motivate each other, meet deadlines, and deliver value. Our interns regularly head to college and immediately take on leadership roles at their schools.
We have been very excited to find Pledge 1%. The philosophy of giving back to the community and adding value aligns very well with ours. We are very pleased to formally join the program and look forward to encouraging others to do so as well. Being a part of this organization helps keep priorities in focus and adds a level of accountability.
At the end of each summer we have a presentation night for the interns. They get to invite family, teachers, and other important people in their lives. Our entire staff attends, with a great deal of pride in the investment they have placed in these young people. The students discuss lessons learned and challenges overcome while demonstrating the results of their software development efforts. I was very pleased this year that a major component of the presentation was the comradery and teamwork they had learned. These high school interns readily admitted they had previously worked alone on projects, but now understood the power of a team. That kind of growth is priceless and worth celebrating.
To learn more and to see this program in action, click here to watch the video.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016
By Erin Reilly, Executive Director of Twilio.org
A lot of people think about social impact initiatives as purely philanthropic, a side project a company takes on to give back, something that is separate from the financials and commercially driven initiatives of a business. In Twilio.org, Twilio’s social impact program, we don’t take this approach.
In the past three years since launching Twilio.org, we’ve learned that social responsibility must be as critical to our success as a company as any other initiative. We actively build ties so that when we build a better company, we also increase our ability to generate social impact. And when our social impact program grows, so too does our business.
Creating a virtuous cycle between the two and actively making them inextricably tied is important for the sustainability of both efforts.
Pledge 1% influenced Twilio’s ability to create this virtuous cycle so that Twilio was no longer “a business with a social impact program” but instead a corporation that does good while creating value. Prior to taking the pledge, we knew we wanted to prioritize social impact, but we hadn’t committed a number to the cause. We had already donated and discounted our product, as well as engaged our employees, but we wanted to step it up by committing our equity. Pledge 1% provided a clear precedent that we could follow of some other great companies that committed 1% equity to social impact.
We’ve seen the impact of our commitment in a few ways already. It reinforced the virtuous cycle between social impact and our business because as Twilio.org generates more impact with nonprofits using our platform, the company does better and our equity is more highly valued, so we have more resources for social impact. Our commitment to Twilio.org has also reassured some of our for-profit clients. When a business sees that we are willing to stake our reliability on a suicide helpline, they know that we can handle other big challenges, too. For our employees, the Twilio.org commitment has a similar effect. Employees are going to do the extra work to test the platform because they know that every message matters. The platform you’re building may be the one that connects someone in crisis with a counselor on Crisis Text Line, brings a doctor to the aid of a child on the verge of drowning through Trek Medics, or connects a victim of a natural disaster with help via the American Red Cross.
At the end of the day, social impact will not be successful if it’s a “nice to have.” Put the full weight of the company behind your program, and you will be amazed by the impact it has on the strength of your business, your customer’s trust in you as a company, and your employee culture.
Originally posted: November 29, 2016